Toward a Poetic of Modern Realistic Tragedy

TOWARD A POETIC OF MODERN REALISTIC TRAGEDY THE GREAT TRADITIONAL EXAMPLES OF dramatic theory, Aristotle's Poetics, Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy} Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism, were written after the fact; that is, they looked back upon a body of dramatic work which had proved its power to move and had stood up to the test of experience. In the view of these critics the tragic poet was primarily an artist, a maker, who had the skill (or even the God-given gift) to express the human comedy or tragedy in dramatic form. Therefore, the traditional poetic was largely formal in nature; it was a critical rationale of that skill or, as in Coleridge's case, an adoration of that imaginative gift. During the nineteenth century there emerged another poetic which was the composite work of a number of thoughtful theorists of the drama; the most articulate among them were Hettner, Hebbel, Zola, Strindberg, and their eloquent exponent early in this century, Georg Lukacs. They were critics and playwrights who reflected the emerging modern conceptions of man's fate in the world and who helped shape the development of modern realistic tragedy. The difference between the new poetic and those of the past was that it did not analyze established forms of drama in order to determine their excellence ; on the contrary, the aim of the new theorists was to abandon set forms which were no longer expressive of modern philosophical views and modern dramatic subjects. The desirability of a postAristotelian and a post-Shakespearean poetic became explicit in their writings. The new dramatic theory was prophetic of things to come. It regarded the playwright not merely as a skilled and inspired artist, but as the purveyor of new knowledge. Aside from the revolt against romanticism and idealism in the theater and the contempt felt for the pseudo-realism of the French school, the modern theorists sought to determine the major features of the new drama on the basis of a changed outlook on life. A new tragic theater would have to come into being, cognizant of modern theories of history, sociology, psychology, and biology. The modern tragedy itself would become a form of inquiry or reexamination of man's estate in the world and thus possess cognitive value. It would extend the range of our perceptions and understanding. And indeed , perhaps the outstanding characteristic of the new drama is that it directs our attention inquisitively and exclusively to the phenomenal world. The plot, as medium of imitation, no longer 136 1966 TOWARD A POETIC 137 reenacts an archetypal action, like the Greek legends or the moral allegories which Shakespeare fashioned out of historical and fictional sources; on the contrary, the new drama attempts an artistic conquest of external reality, in an effort to understand the natural and social forces, the ineluctable fate, to which the modern individual is exposed. From this basic shift in the function of the drama we can derive a number of general characteristics of modern tragedy as the realists and naturalists conceived it.1 But we should be clear at the outset that it is realism and naturalism understood as an intellectual point of view or attitude toward human existence which determine the characteristic forms of modern tragedy; realism as a technique of faithful imitation has for the moment little bearing on the questions with which we are concerned. The distinction is important. It was self-evident to the architects of the poetic of realistic drama in the nineteenth century. And it allows us for example to understand the difference between two modern plays like Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness and Miller's Death of a Salesman. Mr. Miller writes in the realistic tradition, although in the staging of his play there was no attempt at giving a lifelike illusion ; the setting, the lighting, the music, the evocation of Loman's hallucinations were far removed from the conventional practice of realistic production. On the other hand, Tolstoy'S imitation of the daily life of the Russian peasant is deceptively realistic. He delineates the bestial conduct of his characters in meticulous detail; few naturalistic plays can match the shocking presentation of Nikita's murder...